INDIAN WELLS – Billy Beane, the Oakland A’s general manager with a well-earned reputation for building winning teams on a budget, was smiling when asked about free-agent pitcher Zack Greinke.

He was smiling because he hasn’t been paying attention to Greinke’s market value. The A’s have a young, deep rotation, and Beane probably doesn’t have the budget to chase Greinke even if he wanted to.

“Free agency is an auction situation,” Beane said. “When you’re in an auction situation,you have no control over where it’s going.”

Auction situations might be a bad thing in Oakland. For the deep-pocketed Dodgers, they might be the best way to land a coveted top-two or top-three starting pitcher.

One day into baseball’s annual general manager’s meetings, the Dodgers’ Ned Colletti thinks he’s more likely to land a pitcher on the open market than via trade.

“It’s probably unlikely trade-wise, but there’s probably three or four different pitchers we have interest in, that we would consider three’s or two’s,” Colletti said. “It’s early in the process. Pitching is most of our concentration right now. A couple position player spots we could also fill but at this time, pitching is our priority. Another left-handed reliever is also some of the people we’re thinking about.”

In a shallow market, the process of elimination makes it easy to deduce who the Dodgers are targeting.

Greinke is three years removed from his American League Cy Young Award. The right-hander is coming off a four-year contract that paid him $13.5 million last season and will command a serious raise after going a combined 15-5 with a 3.48 earned-run average for the Brewers and Angels.

Right-hander Anibal Sanchez has underwhelming career numbers (48-51, 3.75 ERA) but turned heads in the playoffs pitching for the Detroit Tigers. Sanchez, getting his first postseason experience at age 28, posted a 1.77 ERA in three starts.

Dan Haren is familiar with the National League West from his 2<MD+,%30,%55,%70>1/<MD-,%0,%55,%70>2 seasons in Arizona, and even more familiar with Southern California having been born and raised here and pitching for the Angels. He endured a poor midseason stretch that might have hurt his free agent value slightly, but the Dodgers could reasonably put him behind Clayton Kershaw and Josh Beckett as a No. 3 starter next season.

Beyond Greinke, Sanchez and Haren, don’t expect the Dodgers to make a big pitch right away.

“If you’re willing to make a quick strike and pay a premium, you get done fast,” Colletti said. “In most cases they’ve waited a long time for this opportunity (free agency) and so they’re going to play it in a patient way.”

KERSHAW FOR THE CY?

Clayton Kershaw is among the top three vote-getters for the National League Cy Young Award for the second year in a row. New York Mets knuckleballer R.A. Dickey and Washington Nationals fireballer Gio Gonzalez are the other finalists to dethrone the defending award winner.

This season, Kershaw led the National League in ERA (2.53) and fell one short of Dickey for the strikeout title, with 229 in 227 2/3 innings.

No other Dodger players were among the finalists for baseball’s postseason awards.

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